1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for providing home appliance control data, and more particularly to a system and method for providing home appliance control data, wherein a control data provision server stores data for control of a home appliance and transfers the stored control data to the home appliance within a brief period of time and at low cost.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, home appliances connectable to the Internet and controllable by users outside of their homes have been significantly increasingly used.
Such home appliances are generally equipped with communication modules, such as local area network (LAN) cards or modems, so as to be connectable to the Internet, transmit and receive information to/from the Internet and be controllable over the Internet. Also, home appliances connected to the Internet transmit information regarding their operating states to the Internet, so that users of the home appliances can monitor the operating states of the appliances over the Internet.
However, the installation of separate communication modules in home appliances for connection of the appliances to the Internet, as mentioned above, increases manufacturing costs of the appliances and in turn reduces the competitiveness of the appliances in the market place.
In order to avoid the above problems, a system has been developed and used which, without installing communication modules in home appliances, connects the home appliances to a personal computer (PC) usually used in a home and in turn connects them to the Internet through the PC, and then controls the appliances over the Internet. However, because the PC is a computing device fixed in one specific place, a user must always inconveniently move to the specific place to control the home appliances using the PC.
In order to remove the above inconvenience, a cellular phone-based home appliance control system has recently been proposed which connects a home appliance to a cellular phone and transfers control information to the home appliance through the cellular phone to control the appliance.
In the cellular phone-based home appliance control system as mentioned above, the cellular phone must be connected to the Internet to allow a user to download the control information through the cellular phone. In this case, however, several steps must be carried out to allow the user to select the control information and the cellular phone to transmit and receive data to/from the Internet, resulting in increases in the number of Internet accesses and Internet access time and, in turn, in communication fees to be paid.